Google Street View's the gift that keeps giving, this time hyperlapse video

Photographs captured by Google Street View have been cleverly stitched together to create an innovative time-lapse video compilation.

The makers of the video, a Canadian digital design company, used photographs available on Google Street View and edited them together to create seamless footage of a road trip through changing landscapes.

Hyperlapse, as the firm, Teehan+Lax, call it, combines a time-lapse technique with sweeping camera movements.

Big skies and sun-dappled countryside feature in the compilation but there are also urban scenes including views across Manhattan Bridge in New York.

The two-minute journey meanders through Norway and Hong Kong, at one point going through a mountain tunnel before emerging past icy hills and then into the city centre of Toronto.

As the film was made using images from Street View, the team behind it believes others will want to use Google’s unlimited database of source material to edit similar films which could become inspirational tools for travellers.

The video allows viewers, through a Google Maps interface, to see where shots are taken from, and also select a point on the map where the camera will remain fixed during that leg of the journey.

Jon Lax, a partner at Teehan+Lax, said: “Now that we have made the software open source others will make more videos using footage from anywhere in the world.

“We could never have got those shots on our own. It would have been cost prohibitive.”

The opportunity for interactive experiences on top of the Google platform was the most interesting feature of the hyperlapse video, he said.